Just got back from the advance screening. Certainly an amazing film that's incredibly deep, yet is still just a fun story to experience from start to finish. I was really impressed with the amount of thought and care that went into its development producing an end result that had people in tears (at least those in my theater).

I managed to catch Inside Out at last night's Fathom Event, too .. but I missed out on the 'live' Q&A afterward, because our theater had to delay the start of its screening by nearly a half-hour due to "problems with the download."

Having grown up as an 'Air Force brat,' it was a little difficult for me to relate to Riley's 'real-world' problem. I actually enjoyed moving to a new place every year or so, and -- until my dad retired from the service -- was pretty much only around other kids who were used to being regularly uprooted themselves; to all of us, that seemed normal.

Luckily, that's the 'B' plot. The 'A' plot -- Joy and Sadness' journey toward mutual understanding -- is far more compelling, both character-wise and plot-wise .. and is packed with marvelously imaginative imagery.

As with nearly all Pixar films, there is much more to the movie than the trailers let on. There's a secondary character who worried me at first as being little more than a 'well-worn' cliché .. but he ended-up surprising me with one of the movie's most poignant moments. There's also a running gag introduced halfway through that got a huge laugh, every time it came up.

I dunno if I'd call it the "best Pixar film ever!!" .. but it's most certainly a 'return to form' for the studio, and a refreshing change from their recent slate of sequels.

Not that I wasn't probably going to see it anyway (I'm a huge Docter fan and think he's easily Pixar's best director, certainly the most underrated), but this just shot up to the top of my list for being the next movie I need to see in a theater from this summer's upcoming releases.

Reviews have been good/great, but cagey, so it's excellent that we're finally getting to hear real audiences' takes and it all sounds pretty swell!

"Inside Out may very well be one of the most well thought-out and brilliant animated films of all time" - praise indeed!

Ben wrote:Reviews have been good/great, but cagey, so it's excellent that we're finally getting to hear real audiences' takes and it all sounds pretty swell!
"Inside Out may very well be one of the most well thought-out and brilliant animated films of all time" - praise indeed!

Pixar always hits the audience/critics' sweet-spot whenever they do an original story (I wouldn't quite technically put Monsters U in the "original" category, even though it was perfectly in form, and I don't technically consider Brave one of "their" movies), so every new one that comes out gets praised as "Pixar's best, one of the best animated ever made!"

Until the next one comes along. Still, that has high hopes for getting us back on the horse about loving original-Pixar again, after all that fan Cars 2/Circle 7-cleanup demonizing and paranoia about "They're getting lazy and only doing sequels now! We thought they were a 'magic' studio, but now they've become a regular Hollywood studio just like the others and betrayed us! "
And now that Pixar's back to being considered a Magic Studio again, let's get back to that "Best Picture nomination" thing everyone was talking about before things got a little crazy....And, of course, let's hope they fixed Good Dinosaur.

Out of all the Pixar directors, I think Docter is undoubtedly the best at creating scenes of real poignancy without being saccharine. Lasseter and Stanton seem to hold back a bit on that score, and Bird's Pixar films haven't really gone in that direction. (Iron Giant shows he's definitely capable of emotional sublimity, though).

That final shot of Monsters, Inc. has only gotten better for me over time.

Saw it this afternoon, and I agree with Droosan that the familiar "stranded road trip back" plot, and said unmentioned character might be a cliche' in other movies, but they're done with characteristic Pixar attention and sanity to create trademark sniff-moments and suspense, here.
I was worried going in about Amy Poehler as Joy, knowing that she would be "A snarky female comic's parody of insanely happy-optimistic females, since female comics believe that any optimistic females deserve to die for being so delusional and annoying", but even on that playing field, she's a likable and sympathetic character, unlike Frozen's Anna, who was played for loud lampoon.

It's also clear just how many Muppet fans there really are in Pixar (Docter confessed), as closeup on the big screen, you can see that the emotions are designed to look like fuzzy Muppet-constructed foam-felt characters--which, really, is hard to do in CGI--not to mention Frank Oz cameo'ing as one of the two guards arguing about their hats.
(But then, it was some of PIxar's Brain Trust screenwriters who did the fixup job on Disney's Muppet movie, and prevented a disaster before it happened.)
Oh, and for those who've been micro-obsessing over it lately, yes, it is Michael Giacchino's best score since Up.

Only downside were the anonymous technicians looking a little too much like Minions, after having sat through that trailer, but at least that was less painful than sitting through the Pan trailer.

While the emotions did look "fuzzy" at first glance, if you look more carefully you can see that their "skin" is actually more like a fluid, with bubbles percolating off of their surfaces. The effect will likely be lost for most on home video, as it was quite subtle even on the big screen.

Vernadyn wrote:That final shot of Monsters, Inc. has only gotten better for me over time.

Which brings up another interesting point--
Usually, it's been the trademark that ever since Tin Toy, human toddlers in Pixar movies are depicted as nightmarish, slobbering alien menaces (qv. Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3), but now that the writers and directors are seeing their own kids grow up, we're getting more stories about the arc of growing up, and taking your Goofball Island childhood baggage with you onto something more ambitious.

Given the other sniffly-unmentionable subplots, Riley's story in the movie comes about as close to that "What if Boo grew up into a 11-12-yo. and couldn't see monsters anymore?" Circle 7 script that Pixar wanted to use for their Monsters Inc. sequel but couldn't.